Marketers didn’t sign up to be privacy experts. Yet today, every campaign, every personalization effort, and every analytics dashboard carries a new dimension of risk: whether your marketing technologies are honoring user consent when they collect data about your customers.
Consent banners, wiretap lawsuits, VPPA claims, state-level privacy laws – these are direct liabilities. And marketing sits at the center of them.
Why this matters for marketing teams
Marketers are no longer insulated from privacy risk. What used to be the sole domain of Legal is now front and center in marketing’s daily operations. At conferences and in our day-to-day conversations, we’re hearing the same refrain: privacy isn’t a side conversation anymore. CMOs tell us they’ve never spent more time coordinating with General Counsel, and legal teams openly admit that marketing technology is often a weak link in their privacy defenses.
There are a few reasons for the increased prioritization of digital data privacy across the industry:
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Every tag is a potential liability
Most organizations don’t realize that a single misfiring tag can put them out of compliance. One vendor update, even outside your control, is enough to violate user consent agreements, and plaintiff’s attorneys are watching for exactly that. 90% of the websites we scan show evidence that they may be violating consent agreements, often without knowing it. -
The lawsuits are hitting marketing technology
Consumer-facing companies are already under scrutiny. Investigations into Kay Jewelers and potential lawsuits against eBay highlight how web tracking technologies can trigger privacy claims. Broader litigation trends show how pixels, analytics tools, and personalization engines are being challenged under privacy statutes like the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) and state-level wiretap laws (IAPP overview). -
Privacy law is influencing the marketing rulebook
With more than 20 U.S. states enacting privacy laws, marketing is no longer just about performance. It’s about compliance, too. Companies face mounting exposure to lawsuits, with class action firms and State Attorneys General pursuing tracking violations aggressively.
What future-proofed marketing looks like
Privacy-forward marketing doesn’t mean less personalization or giving up on doing innovative things with the data you’re collecting. It simply means building trust while reducing risk.
The marketing teams that succeed will:
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Verify consent handling continuously rather than relying on one-time CMP audits.
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Treat visibility as essential – understanding what fires, when, and whether it aligns with each user’s consent choices.
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Work cross-functionally with Legal, IT, and Compliance, so marketing isn’t left holding the bag when lawsuits land.
The Bigger Picture: Governance
The challenge for marketers isn’t simply compliance. It’s governance. It’s ensuring that every campaign and every vendor integration can stand up to legal scrutiny tomorrow, not just today.
That’s where Sentinel Insights comes in. Our consent governance platform monitors every tag on every page in real time, validating against each user’s consent status and alerting you to violations so you can fix it up long before regulators and class action law firms start asking questions.
For marketers, that means you can focus on pipeline and ROI with confidence that your MarTech stack isn’t quietly putting your company at legal risk. Marketers who take privacy seriously today will save their organizations from lawsuits tomorrow.
